Books

LeakyCon, one of the biggest Harry Potter conventions in the U.S., is turning the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center into a temporary Hogwarts Castle from Aug 9-11. The question is: Are you a big enough fan of all things Potter to warrant buying a ticket? Let’s find out by going…

Close to 80 graves, some of them tiny and nameless, rest near some old oak trees along the southern edge of the University of Texas at Arlington. There, at Doug Russell Park, near the intersection of Cooper and Mitchell Streets, lay the remnants of a story that played out during…

Organizers of a Denton event hope to see anarchists flock to their city this weekend. Their goal isn’t to protest, but to invite others to learn about their cause. “We want to bring the radical community in North Texas, and/or regionally, closer together. And (with) the local community, we want…

It was a cultural explosion that still reverberates today. The 1920’s Harlem Renaissance was a period of legendary creative output. A group of poets, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers and musicians that sprouted the likes of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois. According to Alain Locke, a writer,…

While the rest of us blame autocorrect for our misspellings, kids are still taking spelling to new competitive levels, and for the first time ever in its 92 years, the Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship had an eight-way tie. Three of the winners came from the North Texas area, and…

Elisabeth Hasselbeck is finally ready to share her point of view with Dallas. On April 1, Hasselbeck will be at White’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Southlake to host a Girl’s Night Out: Refocusing Our Point of View Together. Refocusing Our Point of View Together? If you think that sounds…

Chad Dean moved his life, and the happiness of his wife and two children, in positive steps when he appeared on TLC’s My 600-lb Life. Weighing in at 701 pounds, Dean was no longer able to work his job as a long haul trucker and relied on his family for…

Plenty of people in baseball have written a book. There’s Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, Josh Lewin’s You Never Forget Your First — hell, even actress Alyssa Milano has written a book about baseball. Eric Nadel, the radio announcer and voice of the Texas Rangers, has written three books, but his…

We hope you’re thirsty because two tall drinks of water are coming to town. Drew and Jonathan Scott, twin brothers, best-selling authors and stars of Property Brothers among other major career ventures, are making a pit stop in Frisco to promote their first children’s book, Builder Brothers Big Plans. Women…

It’s 1:30 p.m. Thursday and New York City is at full speed. From the Upper East Side to Wall Street, cabs are honking and couriers race on bicycles. This is prime earning time for Ryan Serhant. He’s gracious but clear, “I have 15 minutes for this call,” he tells the…

Comic book stories can take place in any location imaginable; the only constraints are the writer’s imagination. With all those possibilities to set a story, it’s surprising how many times the chosen location is Dallas. Dallas is a city of culture and history, but it’s hard to compare it to…

The visual most people have of a comic book is of a brightly colored superhero flying over the city, fist-fighting an equally brightly colored supervillain. A fan of the medium is already aware of the amount of personal, story-driven works present in modern comics, but a large part of the…

The owner of Oak Cliff bookstore The Wild Detectives became aware of literary gender inequality and wanted to do something about it. He approached Lauren Smart, who was then the arts editor for the Dallas Observer and now works as a professor at Southern Methodist University, to program an entire month…

It’s a fairly simple concept. On Friday night, five women will strip down, get onstage and crack open some books. It’s a game plan that Naked Girls Reading has played out across since its first event in 2010. It’s not an act of tantalization, at least not in the way…

For nearly seven decades, the house at 314 W. Eighth St. in Oak Cliff was merely a domicile. Nothing more than a place to keep your stuff dry when it rains and plug in your refrigerator. That was before Javier García del Moral and Paco Vique owned it. Four years…

Although they came from diverse backgrounds, a common thread links the women in Mary Dodson Wade’s latest book, Amazing Texas Girls. “I wanted to call this book Gumption,” Wade says, “because I see that.” Amazing Texas Girls, released Sunday by publisher Lone Star Books, trails the lives of 15 women,…

Tyra Banks was up at 4 a.m. the day after Easter to appear on the Today show with her mother. They were promoting their new book, Perfect is Boring: 10 Things My Crazy, Fierce Mama Taught Me About Beauty, Booty and Being a Boss. But Banks’ mom, Carolyn London isn’t…

Writing a memoir about your family that holds nothing back sounds like a perfect way to make every Thanksgiving awkward for the rest of your life. But Dianna de la Garza, the mother Demi Lovato, says the pop singer, as well as her other daughters, Dallas Lovato and Madison de…

It all began with the idea to sell organic 1-pound pumpkins. Although Free Range Pumpkins, Arlington’s newest geek culture warehouse, never sold pumpkins, owners Herb and Amy Kaplan sold lots of other stuff through Amazon. Now they’ve opened their first brick-and-mortar store. A decade ago, it might have been the…

The inspiration for a new children’s book geared toward Dallasites, Goodnight Lakewood, arrived at bedtime. “One night, we were reading books before bedtime with our older son, Mack, who was 3 at the time,” author and Lakewood resident Jaclyn Amend says. “One of his favorite books was a ‘goodnight’ book…

This list, arranged in no particular order, is limited to books that were published in 2017 and written by authors who live in Dallas-Fort Worth. The Sandcastle Empire by Kayla Olson This dystopian thriller, published in June, focuses on a formerly privileged girl named Eden who escapes a labor camp…